SYNOPSIS: After the October 30, 1993 deadline to restore duly-elected
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide passed unrealized, observers reported
an increasing sense of fear and despair. More than 4,000 civilians
have been killed since the 1991 bloody mlitary coup which ousted Aristide.
Few Americans are aware of our secret involvement in Haitian politics,
nor the impact those policies have had on the US.

Some of the high military officials involved in the coup have been on the
CIA's payroll from "the mid-1980s at least until the 1991 coup..."
According to one government official, "Several of the principal players
of the current situation were compensated by the US government."

Further, the CIA "tried to intervene in Haiti's election with a covert-
action program that would have undercut the political strength" of
Aristide. The aborted attempt to influence the 1988 election was
authorized by then-President Ronald Reagan and the National Security
Council. The program was blocked by the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence in a rare move.

Next, a confidential Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) report revealed
that Haiti is "a major transshipment point for cocaine traffickers" who
are funneling drugs from Colombia and the Dominican Republic into the
United States. The DEA report also revealed that the drug trafficking,
which is bringing one to four tons of cocaine per month into the US,
[or 12-48 tons per year] worth $300-$500 million annually, is taking place
with "the knowledge and active involvement of high military officials and
business elites."

According to Patrick Elie, who was Aristide's anti-drug czar, Haitian
police chief Lt. Col. Michel Francois is at the center of the drug trade.
Francois' "attaches" reportedly have been responsible for a large number
of murders and violence since the coup.

The revelations offer a disturbing look into CIA and State Department
policy toward Haiti. Elie stated that he was constantly rebuffed by the
CIA when he tried to alert it to the military's drug trafficking:
"All we were met with was stonewalling, and in fact we were told there
was going to be no more cooperation between the US and Haiti, but at
the same time... the CIA continued to cooperate with the Haitian military."
Elie reported how the CIA-created Haitian National Intelligence Service
(NIS)--supposedly created to combat drugs--was actually involved with
narcotics-trafficking, and "functioned as a political intimidation and
assassination squad."

The Clinton administration's silence on the Haitian drug flow has led
some congressional critics, such as John Conyers (D-MI), to suggest that
his silence reflects de facto support for the drug-trafficking Haitian
military and a reluctance to substantively support the democratically-
elected Aristide.

SSU CENSORED RESEARCER:
Sunil Sharma

COMMENTS: Investigative author Dennis Bernstein's charges that the US
government's ongoing relationship with drug-trafficking dictators and
their associated henchmen is peraps one of the most important and under-
reported stories of our time.

"President Clinton's continuing silence on the Haitian military's
involvement in a one-billion-dollar a year illegal cocaine operation--
and the mainstream media's acceptance of this silence--is causing untold
suffering in Haiti and the US," Bernstein said. "In fact," he continued,
"it is this silence about the drugs that allows the military to continue
to skirt the embargo with massive amounts of drug-money, to torture and
assassinate thousands of Haitians, and to wreak havoc in this country
by continuing to import tons of cocaine onto US soil. The US created,
funded, and trained Haiti's drug-dealing death squad--the National
Intelligence Service--which apparently was conceived to destabilize President
Aristide.

"Democracy doesn't exist without a free and unfettered press that isn't
afraid to ask the difficult questions and then to publish the answers to
those questions without checking informally with the state department
and the CIA. The press's continuing failure to report adequately on
illegal intelligence operations and CIA-sponsored drug-running and
assassination coup teams may ultimately lead to the death of democracy,
not only in Haiti but in the US.

"The only people to gain from the press's limited reporting of the Haiti
drug story and related US complicit silence are drug-traffickers and their
supporting death-squads and dictators, as well as collaborating smugglers
and related criminals involved in a billion-dollar-drug operation."

Bernstein concludes that "The soaring number of crack addicts in the US
and Haiti--and their families--and the victims of addict robberies and
murders will definately not benefit from the silence---and lack of good
reporting."

PBS' "Frontline," one of the nation's most acclaimed investigative television
programs, produced a well-documented, hour-long special, on November 9
[1993], titled "Showdown in Haiti," which examined President Clinton's
foreign-policy initiative in Haiti. Ironically, the otherwise hard-hitting
documentary didn't mention drugs or the CIA.